Auto-updates feature meeting summary: April 21, 2020

These are the weekly notes for the WP Auto-updates team meeting that happened on Tuesday April 21, 2020. You can read the full transcript on the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.-auto-updates SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel.

As a reminder, WP Auto-updates Feature PluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. is developed on GitHub and is available for testing on WordPress.org plugins repository.

Version 0.6.0: introduce AJAX handling on auto-updates enabling/disabling

Thanks to @ronalfy who did a great job on this, auto-updates enabling and disabling action links are now using AJAX calls.

@audrasjb added wp.a11y.speak support to communicate AJAX enabling/disabling changes to screen readers.

@ronalfy opened an issue to improve AJAX responses error messages. This is currently the last issue slated to milestone 0.6.0.

@pbiron also opened an issue to evaluate the opportunity to include version info in email notifications.


Last minute edit: WP Auto-updates 0.6 was released earlier today 💥


Next step: Core merge proposal

The idea is to start to work on the core merge proposal once version 0.6 is released.

Concerning the core merge itself, @audrasjb two approaches:

  • Merging the feature in a single TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.
    • Pros: Easier testing of the overall scope.
    • Cons: A single ticket could be a potential rabbit hole, with endless discussions on the overall feature, so it could be more efficient to manage small and self contained tickets.
  • Merging the feature step by step, with several tickets
    • Pros: It’s more efficient to ship the feature step by step so the steps that are potential blockers could land later, in other releases, if they deserves more discussion. This is the process we used for the development of the feature plugin so it won’t be so difficult to reproduce those steps in several Trac tickets.
    • Cons: It’s a way more difficult to test the overall feature when there are several tickets to test.

Please feel free to comment this post to share your thoughts!

As noted by @whyisjake and @sergeybiryukov, both approaches makes sense. @pbiron noted that Lazy-loading Feature was done in one commit. However, the feature doesn’t bring any UIUI User interface change.

For @whyisjake, WP Auto-updates is pretty light as well and could fit with the single patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. option.

For @afragen, if the merge tickets can be made in logical, non-dependent code blocks, then it would probably be good to do it this way. Otherwise as a single patch.

@whyisjake pointed out that even if the feature is a goal for 2020, it will necessarily need an approval from @matt / @chanthaboune, first.

As it’s a mandatory first step, @whyisjake proposed his help on the Core merge proposal post and started a collaborative Google Doc.

The idea is to publish this post next week, to fit with WordPress 5.5 Alpha development planning.

@pbiron added that once our work is merged into core, we should all be prepared for some things to be reverted/changed after the first “real world” betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. tests.

Open floor

@ronalfy asked if there is any plan to handle translations auto-updates, like email notifications. @sergeybiryukov answered that when language packs were added to core, the idea was that they should always update automatically in the background and do not need a specific UI or notifications.

@paaljoachim added that with @ibdz, they added additional screenshots to the visual que issue. Additionnal thoughts are welcome.


Next meeting is scheduled on Tuesday April 28, 2020 at 17:00.

#5-5, #auto-update, #feature-plugins, #feature-projects, #feature-autoupdates